Promote Your People
If you are in a position of leadership, work hard to promote your people every chance you get. One of your important responsibilities is developing and growing the people who work for you and giving them opportunities to grow in their career. You want to help them grow personally and professionally. If you are a head football coach or AD, you want to help your coaches to be able to pursue opportunities to better their carer. You want to help your coordinators become head coaches, and your position coaches to become coordinators. If you are a coordinator, you want to help your position coaches to become coordinators. If you are a principal, you want to develop your assistant principals to become principals.
One of the AD's I worked for used to say, "if people aren't fishing in your pond, you need to stock it with better fish." He loved when people would call about coaches on staff. When we hired coaches, he wanted to know what their goals were. He would then tell me as a coordinator to help them find opportunities to pursue their goals. He wanted to see guys have an opportunity to grow professionally and he worked hard to make that happen.
One of the hardest things to do is to get a head football coaching job in the state of Texas. There are often over 100 applicants for each job, and many of those applicants are more than qualified. Finding coordinator jobs is also very difficult. Most people are going to hire someone they know, or hire someone who is recommended by someone they know. Having people in your corner who can get you to the front of the line is important. It is much harder to get hired if you don't have connections who are respected. This is the same if you are trying to get hired at the college level. Help your guys when they have an opportunity to move up. And if you want to move up, ask your head coach and athletic director to help you do so.
It is important that you know the goals of your coaches. Know what they aspire to be so you can help them get there. You also can help them grow the skills they will need to take that next step. If you know you have a coach who wants to lead a program, provide him opportunities to learn about budgeting and personnel management. Take him through the day-to-day operations that exist behind the scenes. Help him to learn about the things you do that he doesn't see.
If you are a coordinator, do everything you can to help your guys become coordinators. Give them responsibility in game planning. Divide the game planning and practice planning tasks up among your coaches. Let them script practice. Divide up your game planning areas and allow them to take on more responsibility. Have them be involved in building the call sheet. Talk to them about the why behind what you are doing. And when an opportunity comes up for them to become a coordinator, help them get that opportunity.
